1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wet electrophotographic printer, and more particularly, to a refill cartridge for a printer having an improved structure to enable ink to be rapidly supplied to an ink cartridge placed in a main body of the printer, and an ink refill apparatus adopting the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a laser printer for a computer or printer applied to a copy machine adopts either a dry developing method using a powdered toner or a wet developing method using a developer liquid obtained by mixing toner with a liquid carrier. Both methods involve electrophotography in which a charged toner or developer liquid is transferred onto a photosensitive medium having a latent static image, and then a paper is passed between a transfer medium rotating in contact with the photosensitive medium, thereby printing an intended image onto a recording paper.
In a conventional electrophotographic printer, ink is supplied to a developing unit via an ink cartridge installed below the developing unit, so it is difficult to allocate the internal space of a printer. That is, the location of the developing unit is limited to a position near the photosensitive belt, so that the location of the ink cartridge is also limited in consideration of the volume of the ink cartridge, replacement and supplementation of ink, cleaning and repairing thereof.
Based on the above considerations, an ink supplying method, in which an ink cartridge is fixed to a position without limitations on the installation space, and in which ink is provided to the ink cartridge using an extra refill cartridge, can be adopted. According to this method, only the refill cartridge is replaced without replacing functional parts normally stored in the ink cartridge, such as a mixer, a dripless valve, an air hole and installation/detachment equipment, thereby lowering the manufacturing costs.
However, when using the refill cartridge, it takes a long time to inject ink into the ink cartridge, so a user must also wait for a long time.